Google Inc has open-sourced its tool set for building Web applications, the Google Web Toolkit.
According to a notice issued by Chris Ulbrich, a spokesperson for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, the company has open-sourced the GWT 1.3 release candidate. Previous versions of the GWT were only partly open-sourced, Ulbrich said.
In a Dec. 12 blog post, Bruce Johnson, technical lead for GWT at Google, said, “Today is quite a milestone for Google Web Toolkit: with the GWT 1.3 Release Candidate, our team is very happy to announce that all of GWT is open source under the Apache 2.0 license.”
Google introduced GWT last May as a free development framework for writing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web applications in the Java language. The toolset features a debugging browser and a Java-to-JavaScript compiler.
Ulbrich said Google will be making the Google Web Toolkit development process completely transparent, meaning that design discussions, feature prioritization, bug fixing and roadmap planning will be done in an open Google Group.
“We welcome anyone who wants to help make the Google Web Toolkit even better,” Ulbrich said.
Meanwhile, Johnson said the GWT teams mission is: “To radically improve the Web experience for users by enabling developers to use existing Java tools to build no-compromise AJAX for any modern browser.”
He also said fully open-sourcing the technology was not a matter of if, but of when Google would do it.
“Now that GWT has some serious adoption and a lively user community, open-sourcing is the obvious next step to help GWT evolve more quickly,” Johnson said.
In addition, Google has created a charter document for the effort, titled “Making GWT Better,” that describes the philosophical foundations of GWT as well as how to compile GWT, contributing code, and participating in the new Google Web Toolkit Contributors group, Johnson said.